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Assessing student learning in co-curricular experiences can be challenging! Here are some suggestions from the (drum roll, please!) forthcoming third edition of my book Assessing Student Learning: A Common Sense Guide, to be published by Jossey-Bass on February 4, 2018. (Pre-order your copy at www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1119426936.html)

Recognize that some programs under a student affairs, student development, or student services umbrella are not co-curricular learning experiences. Giving commuting students information on available college services, for example, is not really providing a learning experience. Neither are student intervention programs that contact students at risk for poor academic performance to connect them with available services.

Focus assessment efforts on those co-curricular experiences where significant, meaningful learning is expected. Student learning may be a very minor part of what some student affairs, student development, and student services units seek to accomplish. The registrar’s office, for example, may answer students’ questions about registration but not really offer a significant program to educate students on registration procedures. And while some college security operations view educational programs on campus safety as a major component of their mission, others do not. Focus assessment time and energy on those co-curricular experiences that are large or significant enough to make a real impact on student learning.

Make sure every co-curricular experience has a clear purpose and clear goals. An excellent co-curricular experience is designed just like any other learning experience: it has a clear purpose, with one or more clear learning goals; it is designed to help students achieve those goals; and it assesses how well students have achieved those goals.

Recognize that many co-curricular experiences focus on student success as well as student learning—and assess both. Many co-curricular experiences, including orientation programs and first-year experiences, are explicitly intended to help students succeed in college: to earn passing grades, to progress on schedule, and to graduate. So it’s important to assess both student learning and student success in order to show that the value of these programs is worth the college’s investment in them.

Recognize that it’s often hard to determine definitively the impact of one co-curricular experience on student success because there may be other mitigating factors. Students may successfully complete a first-year experience designed to prepare them to persist, for example, then leave because they’ve decided to pursue a career that doesn’t require a college degree.

Focus a co-curricular experience on an institutional learning goal such as interpersonal skills, analysis, professionalism, or problem solving.

Limit the number of learning goals of a co-curricular experience to perhaps just one or two.

State learning goals so they describe what students will be able to do after and as a result of the experience, not what they’ll do during the experience.

For voluntary co-curricular experiences, start but don’t end by tracking participation. Obviously if few students participate, impact is minimal no matter how much student learning takes place. So participation is an important measure. Set a rigorous but realistic target for participation, count the number of students who participate, and compare your count against your target.

Consider assessing student satisfaction, especially for voluntary experiences. Student dissatisfaction is an obvious sign that there’s a problem! But student satisfaction levels alone are insufficient assessments because they don’t tell us how well students have learned what we value.

Voluntary co-curricular experiences call for fun, engaging assessments. No one wants to take a test or write a paper to assess how well they’ve achieved a co-curricular experience’s learning goals. Group projects and presentations, role plays, team competitions, and Learning Assessment Techniques (Barkley & Major, 2016) can be more fun and engaging.

Assessments in co-curricular experiences need students to give them reasonably serious thought and effort. This can be a challenge when there's no grade to provide an incentive. Explain how the assessment will impact something students will find interesting and important.

Short co-curricular experiences call for short assessments. Brief, simple assessments such as minute papers, rating scales, and Learning Assessment Techniques can all yield a great deal of insight.

Attitudes and values can often only be assessed with indirect evidence such as rating scales, surveys, interviews, and focus groups. Reflective writing may be a useful, direct assessment strategy for some attitudes and values.

Co-curricular experiences often have learning goals such as teamwork that are assessed through processes rather than products. And processes are harder to assess than products. Direct observation (of a group discussion, for example), student self-reflection, peer assessments, and short quizzes are possible assessment strategies.

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2 Comments

This should be especially useful to institutions gearing up for a visit from their regional accreditor, since it will help them establish priorities for co-curricular assessment (and perhaps reduce their panic!). Thank you!